Pangalacticgargleblaster
By Mort

C/P 1/1

A little Valentine nonsense.

Disclaimers: They're MINE <g>. But Pangalacticgargleblasters belong to the late, great, Douglas Adams.

~~ ~~ ~~

"Dare," B'Elanna announced aggressively.

"That's *SO* not fair," Geron complained peevishly, although his words were muffled by Greg's lap.

"Yeah?" B'Elanna challenged. "Say that to my face, asshole!"

"If he could still stand up, he wouldn't be on his knees," Harry pointed out reasonably.

"That's what you think," Ayala smirked. "Just rest your sore head, baby," he purred at Geron, pushing the younger man's head back into his groin.

"Geron's right," Tom smirked. "The game's 'truth OR dare', B'El. Not 'Dare'."

"I *like* dare," B'Elanna snarled.

"Obviously," Vorik sniffed.

"Let's…um…let's let her dare," Neelix interrupted quickly, waving his arms in a frantic placating gesture.

"Ow!" Megan Delaney squealed, as he accidentally elbowed her in the ribs.

"Oh, sorry sweetums," Neelix gasped.

The room filled with the loud dramatic sounds of a half-dozen people pretending to vomit. The sounds were too much for Geron who turned green, broke away from Ayala and crawled frantically to the bathroom.

"Now look what you've done," Greg hissed angrily at Harry. "Hang on, baby, I'm coming," he yelled after Geron, staggering to his feet and stumbling blindly after Geron's retreating feet.

"Me?" Harry asked the room in general. "What did I do?"

"Watch out, Geron," Tom yelled towards the bathroom. "Greg wants to come!"

Everyone collapsed in a fit of giggles, except B'Elanna who was still glowering fiercely from the middle of the room.

"I. SAID. DARE," she roared.

Tom recovered first, poking his head up from the cushion he'd been sniggering into, blinking slightly at the sudden rush of light against his eyes but then manfully pulling himself together with a loud belch.

"Send someone a Valentine," he dared.

The room erupted with howls of laughter.

B'Elanna's glower became a vicious grin of pure satisfaction.

"I'll send one to Seven," she purred, and began keying the message into Tom's terminal.

"I can't wait to see the look on her face," Megan snorted nastily, as B'Elanna added the last flourishes to the email.

Harry struggled desperately through the thick clouds that obscured what had previously been his brain. Something was *wrong* about this picture, a vague thought that eluded him completely in his alcoholic haze yet still thudded behind his throbbing forehead with the sharp pain of an ice pick. 

But with the poor timing that seemed to be the curse of his life, B'Elanna's finger had pressed the 'enter' key before Harry managed to voice his concern. He gazed helplessly at the now empty screen and visualized the message spinning down through the computer to its unlucky recipient. From Tom's computer. From Tom's *unencrypted* computer. 

"I don't think it's a good idea," Harry exclaimed, enunciating each word carefully, before ruining the solemnity of his warning by burping loudly.

By the time everyone had stopped sniggering, even Harry had forgotten *why* it hadn't been a good idea.

"You just wanted to send her one yourself," Tom slurred.

Harry shrugged, caught a mental flash of Seven's chest, then looked blearily at the table where his glass seemed to have reproduced itself into a similar twin peaked image. He carefully considered which drink was real and which was the illusion. He wasn't so drunk that he didn't *know* that he was seeing double. He smirked as inspiration struck him, reached out both hands towards *both* glasses, leaned forward, overbalanced and crashed headlong into the coffee table.

Tom watched him crumple to the floor with remarkably little concern, all things considered.

"Harry's on the floor," Neelix pointed out, a little time later.

"He is," Sam agreed, hiccupping with surprise.

Everybody looked, blinked and then nodded their own agreement.

"Anybody want another of these 'Pangalacticgargleblasters'?" Tom asked brightly.
"Who next?" B'Elanna asked, after a fresh round of drinks had been served.

"It is my turn," Vorik announced.

"You sure that's the truth?" B'Elanna demanded.

"Of course," Vorik replied, his face as affronted as a drunken Vulcan's could manage without actually cracking an expression.

"Then it's *my* turn," Megan purred.

Vorik's slow blink of astonishment made everyone collapse into riotous laughter again.

"DARE," Megan announced.

B'Elanna's eyes gleamed.

"Chakotay," she challenged.

Megan staggered over to the terminal, amidst whoops and hollers, and started to type.

Then froze, shrugging helplessly.

"What the hell should I write?"

"Poetry," Neelix announced. "The Commander loves poetry."

"Roses are red, violets are blue…" Megan started.

Neelix groaned and covered his ears.

B'Elanna looked over to where Tom was collapsed in a heap, leaned over Megan's shoulder, whispered in her ear and they both fell against each other giggling wildly.

"Do you know his private code?" Megan demanded.

"Course I do," B'Elanna smirked. "We just go into his files, find the one he reads most often and cut and paste it."

Megan grinned, reached for the keyboard, swayed and slid off her chair to the floor.

"What IS in this drink?" Sam asked Tom, but was only answered by a drunken snore.

B'Elanna just smirked and opened Chakotay's personal diary.

~~~



"Pangalacticwhat?" the Doctor huffed, his subroutines bravely attempting to portray complete distain rather than revealing the jealousy that had filled him since he had heard about the party he hadn't been invited to. If it hadn't been for Tom's offer to spend all his spare time doing sickbay duties for the next month, he wouldn't have even considered trying to help restore the idiots to sobriety.

Tom shrugged, immediately regretted the movement, gulped, turned green and barfed all over the sickbay floor.

All around them, the various victims of Tom's unofficial valentine's party turned their own various shades of sickness and rained partly consumed Pangalacticgargleblasters down the sides of the biobeds.

"You *owe* me," the Doctor snarled, as he gingerly minced around the spreading pools of vomit to apply hyposprays to heaving bodies.

"Big time," Tom agreed, rubbing his neck thankfully as the effects of Ayala's illegal still began to fade from his throbbing head.

"You have exactly 45 minutes before the Captain and Commander Chakotay's shuttle is due back," the Doctor added. "I suggest you use that time with a mop and bucket or *no* amount of bribery is going to cover this fiasco up."

"Okay," Tom agreed, although he went pale again at the thought.

The Doctor smirked as he analyzed the readings off his tricorder.

"A word of warning, Mr. Paris," he sniggered. "Whatever happens, don't drink another of these Pangalacticgargleblasters for at least 48 hours. You may *think* you're sober, but believe me, you're not. Just one taste of alcohol before this clears your bloodstream and you'll fall flat on your face."

"Believe *me*," Tom swore, nursing his aching head. "I'm never *ever* drinking again."


~~~

"Did we have a good time?" Harry whimpered.

"The best," Tom smirked, rubbing his pounding forehead. "Don't you remember?"

Harry rubbed at the still prominent lump on his temple, considered pointing out that a field medic like Tom should know about the effects of concussion, then sighed and decided not to waste his breath.

"You always know you had a good time when you can't remember," Tom laughed, nudging Harry in the shoulder and sniggering.

"So you can't remember last night either?" Harry asked uncertainly.

"Not a damned thing," Tom grinned. 

~~~

Seven saw the winking message on her terminal as she entered the second stage of her regeneration cycle. She contemplated ignoring it. Then, deciding unsatisfied curiosity was inefficient, she interrupted her cycle, strode purposefully over to the screen and tapped accept.

"From the moment we met, 
Or at least since you grew back your hair, 
I knew you were The One for me, 
All tits and ass. I bet you look great bare.
You are perfect just the way you are.
Of course, I wouldn't object if you smiled 
Or even put on some makeup now and then.
But if you put out, I guess the rest's irrelevant.
I guess I'm saying; be my valentine, Seven."

She blinked slowly, tapped a few keys to backtrack the message and her face froze in thought.

Tom Paris.

Tom Paris had sent her a personal message. 

A nanoprobe extended from her hand and interfaced with the computer. She quickly referenced the words Valentine and 'put out'.

Ah.

Tom Paris wished to partake of sexual relations with her. That explained his comment about her being bare.

She considered the proposition logically. 

Tom Paris *was* physically attractive, despite his inferior intelligence.

She pondered.

Sexual relations *didn't* require a perfect mate unless the intention was procreation and Tom's straight forward approach was far more preferable than retrying the Doctor's 'dating' lessons.

She glanced at the Valentine again.

"Make up is irrelevant," she snapped, but she returned to complete her regeneration cycle with a strange, thoughtful look on her face.

~~~

Chakotay was exhausted. He'd just spent five days alone on a shuttle with Katherine Janeway and despite his genuine fondness of her company, under usual circumstances, their time on New Earth had proven to them both that their friendship suffered if they spent too much time in each other's pockets. By day three of this latest venture, he'd retreated behind a stoic, stone-faced expression, no longer even bothering to pretend to smile at the Captain's increasingly boring banter.

The problem with Katherine, he decided, was that while *any* story could be amusing heard the first time it inevitably dulled with repetition. Having already been regaled several times with her limited collection of witticisms, he'd long since lost the ability to laugh at them. The sad, but painful, truth was that *most* people were boring on close acquaintance.

Himself included.

He supposed that was why Paris intrigued him so much. Because no matter how damned annoying the man was, the one thing he couldn't be accused of being was boring. 

Irritating, downright annoying, but never boring.

Now five days in a shuttle with Paris might have been interesting. Possibly fatal, given the way the younger man seemed to delight in taunting him, but Chakotay would at least have had a genuine grin on his face while he killed the pilot.

He chuckled, remembering the painfully innocent expression on Paris's face when he'd bumped into him on the way to his quarters. Paris only looked that innocent when he'd been up to something and the expression had tweaked Chakotay's internal bullshit-detector so hard that he'd been tempted to have it out with the blond then and there. Paris looking innocent meant Paris was guilty of something.

Chakotay grinned, his boredom chased away by the thought of delving to the bottom of the mystery.

He almost ignored the winking light on his terminal, his tired feet insisting that nothing could be more important than his bed. He got as far as his bedroom door before his sense of duty overcame him. Then, with a tired, self-hating sigh he shrugged and returned to the computer to play the waiting message.

"Maybe it's a Valentine," he sniggered to himself, only to choke on his own laughter when the message flashed up.

"Here we will moor our lonely ship
And wander ever with woven hands,
Murmuring softly lip to lip,
Along the grass, along the sands,
Murmuring how far away are the unquiet lands:

How we alone of mortals are
Hid under quiet boughs apart,
While our love grows an Indian star,
A meteor of the burning heart,
One with the tide that gleams, the wings that gleam and dart."

He just stared at the words for a long time. The familiar fragment of his favorite poem rolled over him like a soothing wave, yet the anomalous presence of the words on his terminal confused him utterly.

"Who sent this?"

"The message is unsigned," the computer replied tonelessly.

"But who sent it?"

"The message originated from the quarters of Lieutenant Tom Paris."

Tom Paris?

Tom Paris read poetry? Tom Paris liked Yeats? 

Tom Paris sent *him* poetry?

Tom Paris sent him a…a…a valentine?

Suddenly Tom's innocent (guilty) expression in the corridor took on a whole new, infinitely sweeter, meaning.

Spirits, Chakotay told himself, being big on self-enlightenment. *That's* why I find him so damned irritating (intriguing), annoying (attractive), slapable (kissable). That's why I find Katherine so boring. Well, maybe she *is* boring but, hell, the comparison doesn't help her out any. 

Chakotay decided he'd wasted enough time ignoring the obvious. Sure, he liked to ponder and think things through, but he'd never been the type to hesitate when something so *right* slapped him in the face.

He was in love with Tom Paris.

Or maybe lust.

But either way, he wasn't going to waste this opportunity Tom had handed him.

~~~

Tom was whistling to himself as he exited the turbolift and headed for his quarters. It had been a quiet day on the bridge and except for some strange looks from the First Officer, he was pretty sure he'd gotten away with the Valentine's party. He couldn't believe his luck. The Doctor had stuck to his agreement to keep quiet, the Captain had believed Harry's minor concussion had happened during an overenthusiastic clean up of Jeffries Tube 13 and that no-one except B'Elanna even remembered being in his quarters the night before. Then again, since the 'Pangalacticgargleblasters' had been *her* concoction, it was hardly surprising that she alone had withstood their effects.

Chakotay had given him several of his patent 'I know you did *something* Paris, and I'm going to catch you out' stares, but Tom was pretty confident that no evidence remained. He'd even recycled Ayala's still, much to the Maquis' confusion. Apparently Greg was going crazy below-decks, trying to find out who had 'stolen' it from him. Even Geron didn't remember what had happened, although he'd be walking with a limp for days.

Tom was so busy smirking at *that*, he didn't see Seven until she barreled out of a recess and pinned him against the corridor wall. He blinked in total astonishment at the bright red lipstick that hovered a few inches from his mouth. He was still gaping when the said lipstick violently assaulted him.

"Seven?" he gasped, when she finally removed her tongue from his mouth. "What do you want?" Then he slapped himself mentally for the asinine comment when she ground him into the wall with her hips.

"I wish to begin our sexual liaison, Tom Paris."

"Our WHAT?"

Fearing his lungs would collapse if she didn't stop grinding her voluptuous assets into his chest, Tom attempted to slide away from her, his mouth twisted in a terrified grin. Perhaps realizing he needed to breathe to perform 'sexual liaison', Seven released her stranglehold.

"I am ready to 'put out'," she announced carefully.

"You are?" Tom gasped stupidly.

"Is this not what you 'desire'? To see my 'tits and ass bare'?"

"Who are you, and what did you do to Seven?" Tom choked, rubbing his throat frantically where her fingers had almost crushed his windpipe.

She glared at him coldly.

"Um…don't you think we should date first?" Tom suggested, sidling carefully towards the turbolift, wondering whether he could call for a transport out of the corridor before the crazy Borg-babe ripped him in two.

"Dating is inefficient. I prefer the straight-forward approach," Seven complained. 

"I'm…I'm a dating kind of guy," Tom gasped, creeping backwards slowly.

Seven frowned with obvious annoyance.

"You are…." She paused and checked her internal database "…a 'tease'," she concluded grimly.

"I'm sorry….I'm….I'm…oh shit," Tom yelped, then turned and fled into the turbolift.

B'Elanna emerged from the doorway she'd been hiding in.

"See?" she told Seven kindly. "I told you he was just fooling around when he sent you that Valentine."

Seven sighed.

"I am finding my interaction with males to be most unsatisfactory," she confided. 

"Of course you are," B'Elanna replied sympathetically. "How many times have I told you? Men are okay, but you can't beat the real thing. By the way, that shade of lipstick really suits you."

"It does?" Seven asked hesitantly.

"Oh yes," B'Elanna purred.

She threaded her arm through Seven's and started to steer her down the corridor.

"Tell me, Seven. Have you ever tried a Pangalacticgargleblaster?"

~~~

"That shade really isn't you, Tom," Chakotay drawled, as Paris spewed out of the turbolift, lipstick smeared over his face, eyes wild, uniform torn and running like the hounds of hell were after him.

"Commander?" Tom gasped, sliding to a halt. He didn't even know what deck he was on. He'd been in such a panic that he couldn't remember *what* he'd screamed at the lift. 

Chakotay laughed. Now that was what he liked about Tom, he decided. Since he'd only sent the message to Tom's terminal ten minutes earlier, he knew that Tom must have immediately started running to get here so fast. It warmed his heart that Tom was so eager, confused him somewhat that Tom had arrived looking like some mad woman had savaged him in the lift and completely confused him that Tom was calling him "Commander" under the circumstances. 

The boy was decidedly strange, Chakotay decided. Strange. But not boring. Definitely not boring.

"I think, under the circumstances, you should call me Chakotay," he said, with a wide grin.

"Circumstances?" Tom whispered back, as the Commander stepped forward and wrapped him in a bear hug.

"I refuse to spend our whole date with you calling me Commander," Chakotay grinned.

Tom's mind frantically burrowed around for a safe place to hide.

"Spirits," Chakotay exclaimed, as Tom turned as white as a ghost and fainted in his arms. "No wonder you've always pretended to be so aggressive, Tom, if I affect you *this* strongly."

He beamed happily, sweeping Tom up in his arms and decided to forgo the planned stroll on the holographic beach. The poor lad was obviously far too desperate to play waiting games, he decided. He'd take Tom home and show him just how much his own attitude had taken an about turn.

Chakotay laid Tom on the bed, stripped him quickly (since he'd read somewhere that it was a good idea to loosen the clothing of people who'd fainted) and then slowly kissed Tom awake.

"Wh…what?" Tom spluttered, sitting up in panic, and then screeching in shock at his own nakedness.

"Here," Chakotay smiled, pressing a glass into Tom's hand.

Tom gulped desperately at the drink, thinking it was water. Too late, his brain identified the taste. He struggled to rise, felt the alcohol hit him, and collapsed against Chakotay's chest mumbling in incoherent panic against the older man's neck.

"Slow down, Tom," Chakotay murmured, although his heart had begun to race at the way Tom had thrown himself against him and started kissing his neck. "We've got all night. Here. Have another drink."

Tom struggled back to a sitting position, gazed blearily at the huge hulking shape that unbelievably still *seemed* to be the Commander and decided he must be dreaming.

He raised a hand towards the Commander, found something prominent among the vague blur and pinched it to see whether he woke up.

"Ughhh," Chakotay groaned, as Tom grasped his cock and squeezed it a little too enthusiastically.

"Ohhh," Tom moaned back, as Chakotay's voice sent an unexpected shiver down his spine.

Soft lips latched onto his throat, kissing a slow, sensuous line over the flesh that Seven had bruised with her assault.

I *am* dreaming, Tom decided, at which point he gave up fighting the totally unexpected pleasure. He shivered, closed his eyes and relaxed, deciding his dream *owed* him after the nightmare assault of Seven. This was more like the wet dreams he was used to, even if the Commander had never before taken a starring role.

"Another drink?" Chakotay purred.

"Oh, yeah," Tom sighed happily.

As he watched Tom gulp gratefully at his refilled glass, Chakotay spared a fond thought for B'Elanna. It had been so *nice* of her to give him a bottle of Tom's favorite drink. As a teetotaler himself, he'd never even heard of Pangalacticgargleblasters.


The End.